One of the great legends of tennis, a former runner-up at Roland Garros, remembered Simona Halep on the day the French Open, the second Grand Slam tournament of the year 2025, began.
Alex Corretja (51 years old), the Spanish double finalist at Roland Garros and former world number 2, is firmly convinced that former WTA world number one Simona Halep could have won more important trophies in the white sport.
Now an expert at EuroSport, Corretja says he firmly believes in Halep's innocence in that doping scandal and that it's a shame the Romanian couldn't end her career the way she deserved.
"I have a lot of respect for Simona. She has always been a fighter, a gladiator, a professional. I have no doubt that she would have had further chances to win major tournaments because she has already defeated many very strong players before and won major tournaments. That's why it's such a shame what happened to her. I miss her on the circuit. It seems to me that it was very unfortunate that she couldn't finish her career the way she deserved. Of course, I'm not a hundred percent up to date with everything that happened; you need to know all the details precisely and so on. But I have always believed in her. That's why I wanted her to end in a better way because, in my opinion, she has given a lot to tennis.
She has always been mentally and physically very strong. I have no doubts that she would have had further chances to win tournaments in her career, even though women's tennis seems to have reached a new level of strength now. At the same time, let's look at who won in Rome, who played in the finals! It's not necessarily mandatory to be 1.85 meters tall to play tennis nowadays. You can have other skills, and Simona had them all," the Iberian pointed out in an interview for the newspaper Gazeta Sporturilor.
Simona Halep won the French Open in 2018 and has made 12 main draw appearances in Paris, where she lost two finals, in 2014 and 2017.
The same Corretja also talked about the recent collaboration between Marius Copil and the Russian Daria Shnaider, 11th in the WTA rankings: "Ultimately, every time you bring someone who has been on the circuit and knows the game alongside you – OK, maybe you need to adapt and adjust some things, different ways of training – I think that when you know things about tennis, you can bring something different to the player. It doesn't matter if it's women's or men's. I think the most important thing is to know why you do certain things in tennis, why you play in one way or another."
Saturday evening, before Roland Garros, Novak Djokovic won his 100th career trophy at the ATP tournament in Geneva, being the 6th favorite in Paris.
D.A.